FF7 Headcanons and Discussion

[Ite]

Sephiroth never seems to hate Cloud or even dislike him. Even in AC he acts like a friendly rival.

 

[S and G]

Sephiroth never seems to hate Cloud or even dislike him. Even in AC he acts like a friendly rival.

Agreed. Which makes the whole story all the more tragic. Cloud detests Sephiroth for what he did to Nibelheim, yet Sephiroth barely even sees Cloud as a rival (obviously to his own cost - twice).

However, if I remember correctly, there are a few lines that contradict this in Case of Lifestream where Sephiroth does acknowledge Cloud's strength but continues his blase charade as part of the whole mindfuck.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I thought Seph's hatred for Cloud surpassed even Cloud's for Sephiroth. I don't think anyone in the series has hated anyone more.

 

[jazzflower92]

I thought Seph's hatred for Cloud surpassed even Cloud's for Sephiroth. I don't think anyone in the series has hated anyone more.

Now that is some extreme foe yay.Replace that with another word and the yaoi fan girls will flip.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Hmm. I guess your interpretation of "friendly" and "rival" is not the same as mine. Ite. Mine is more like "and may the best man win" followed by tea and biscuits in the clubhouse after. When Sephiroth said, "I've thought of a wonderful gift for you. Shall I give you - despair?" and "Tell me what you treasure most, so I have the pleasure of taking it away from you," I really don't think he had his tongue in his cheek - although he did have his Masamune in Cloud's gut at the time. That's not really friendly rivalry. If it was Spurs v Arsenal he'd get sent off for that.

Out of the whole mass of humanity, Cloud was the only human being who had any individuality for Sephiroth; since Sephiroth "hated everything" , but especially humans, that "everything" went by the name of Cloud.

 

[jazzflower92]

Hmm. I guess your interpretation of "friendly" and "rival" is not the same as mine. Ite. Mine is more like "and may the best man win" followed by tea and biscuits in the clubhouse after. When Sephiroth said, "I've thought of a wonderful gift for you. Shall I give you - despair?" and "Tell me what you treasure most, so I have the pleasure of taking it away from you," I really don't think he had his tongue in his cheek - although he did have his Masamune in Cloud's gut at the time. That's not really friendly rivalry. If it was Spurs v Arsenal he'd get sent off for that.

Out of the whole mass of humanity, Cloud was the only human being who had any individuality for Sephiroth; since Sephiroth "hated everything" , but especially humans, that "everything" went by the name of Cloud.

In the mind of a yaoi fan girl this is proof that Sephiroth is absolutely cloudsexual.

Since technically Cloud is Sephiroth's everything because he is the only human he actually had any individuality for.Man,I am just having too much fun with this.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I think part of this has to do with the fact that Cloud defeated Sephiroth without being anyone special, as in the first time he defeated Sephiroth, he was a grunt on the verge of death, which flies in the face of Sephiroth thinking he is special because he was an experiment. If Cloud, a nobody, can defeat Sephrioth, someone special, it means everything Sephrioth thinks is wrong and Seprhioth needs to be right. It also means that anyone has a chance to defeat him.

My headcanon for why Sephrioth is obsessed with Cloud.

 

[jazzflower92]

I have a headcannon that might have been thought of is maybe Jenova herself was once the goddess of a lifestream of another planet until she was corrupted into the form she is now and then turned into a being of evil instinct. Maybe she was Spira's personifcation of its lifrestream.So,Jenova could have once been like Minerva until she was corrupted into what she is today.

 

[Ite]

Is he??? We have very different interpretations of the OG and AC. He barely registers Cloud in the OG, and bats at him in AC like a cat with a toy. If he hated Cloud, more than anyone in the FF series ever hated (Kuja? Kefka? Cyan? Brahne? Tifa even?) no amount of pride would have held him back from skewering Cloud instead of monologizing smugly. I don't think Sephiroth ever says the word Hate, and it would seem OOC for him to do so. In my headcanon.

 

[Lord Noctis]

I seem to recall that a rather sizable chunk of Sephiroth's plan in the OG was dedicated towards mind-fucking Cloud.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

He did skewer Cloud

But seriously, thanks to Pokemon I know my rivals. Sephiroth is most definitely not a friendly rival. A rival, yes, seeking to prove his absolute superiority to that pitiful punk grunt that beat him that one three times, but not at all friendly.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Aren't rivals two or more people competing to win the same thing? Olympic athletes would be rivals, or two men who want to marry the same woman. Aerith and Tifa could be described as rivals for Cloud's affections,

Spoiler: spoiler

though Tifa won by virtue of being the one left alive at the end of the game.

Sephiroth wants to burn the planet to a lifeless husk and use it to fly around the universe. Cloud wants to stop him. That makes them enemies, not rivals.

 

[Edley]

Edit: N/M already stated.

 

[Ryushikaze]

Sephiroth doesn't want to KILL Cloud, Ite. He wants to reduce Cloud to nothing. He has a very specific goal in mind where he needs to prove himself superior to Cloud and this and his hubris are repeatedly his undoing.

 

[Splintered]

I'm with a lot of people here that I originally believed that Sephiroth never thought Cloud as anything special. He messed with Cloud the same way he messed with a lot of his clones, they were inferior, he was going to be a god, so he was going to flaunt his superiority while talking shit.

At least when I first started playing the OG, I always thought that he overlooked Cloud. I think what really made me think that was during that scene in the Shinra Mansion when he's like "ur here, get in loser we're going shopping" like he barely registered Cloud. And when Sephiroth did play with him, it was less because Cloud is special but because he was catching up to Sephiroth and has access to all of the things he needs (black materia, Aerith) while being a puppet.

It sort of went hand in hand with Cloud's delusions; he thought he has this epic personal battle, he thought he was a soldier, he thought he had a cool personality when most of it was in his head. And only as he continued his struggle was he able to be his best.

I think that's what caused me some dissonance between me and AC/C, it made me change my interpretation of Sephiroth. I guess I never thought of his primary motivator as hate. I mean, there was some, and definitely disgust at the wolrd, but imo it was always about him being better than everything. And that translated to Cloud, he didn't hate Cloud, he was just superior to him and it was confusing as shit to him that Cloud was his puppet, a loser, and he still bested him. That look of major confusion at the ending of FFVII was like "That was not as planned."

His focus on Cloud was strange to me, because it was all about Cloud. When in the OG, I always thought his focus on Cloud was less about Cloud and more about Sephiroth's superiority. In AC/C it was about hurting Cloud because he was Cloud, it almost made it feel like he thought of him as an equal or someone worthy of messing with, rather than Sephiroth believes he's so great and everyone around him is so worthless- so why not.

I guess I can see now how Sephiroth enjoyed toying with Cloud in the OG, but even then it was more bitterness about this boy who managed to throw him into the reactor and now he's enjoying conquering him, because like Ryu said- hubris.

So yeah, that's what I thought Sephiroth has been missing in the more recent adaptations, narcissism. I honestly think this was his major fault, how he justified all the horrible things he did, and what caused his downfall, at least I did before. Headcanon I guess.

 

[Dark and Divine]

^this, basically.

In FFVII, Sephiroth wanted revenge against Cloud, but that was hand-to-hand with his plan to achieve godhood. Neither objective was over the other. In fact, Sephiroth, at one point, seemed a lot more concerned to achieve his godhood than to destroy Cloud.

Even in Advent Children/Complete, Sephiroth was bent to get his revenge on Cloud, by making him suffer and ultimately kill him, but before that Sephiroth already drove the planet to despair through Geostigma and through the corruption of the Lifestream. In fact, Sephiroth, through the creation of his own Lifestream, the Negative Lifestream, achieved to an extent what he wanted to achieve in FFVII, being more powerful and godlike than ever before, and his plan to use the planet as a vessel was well on its way.

But since OTWTAS: Case of Lifestream - Black, and being quite noticeable in Dissidia and in the KH games (though the latter are not canon), Sephiroth seems like only a shadow to Cloud. In FFVII and AC/C, Sephiroth was always the top dog and Cloud was always in his shadow (and one of the reasons Cloud struggled so hard was also to get rid of Sephiroth's shadow).

But nowadays, Sephiroth seems like he's dependable of Cloud. Shit like "as long as Cloud remembers me, i'll persevere" or "as long as there's darkness in your heart, I'll be here craved in your heart" is really disapointing compared to what Sephiroth was before.

 

[ForceStealer]

Well KH doesn't count, as you say. But Case of Lifestream Black explicitly gave a reason for why Sephiroth hates Cloud so, now. It's basically all that's left of him. In order to maintain his cohesion and not dissolve into the Lifestream, he had to focus on a powerful emotion. The most powerful emotion at the time was a hatred for Cloud, as that puny grunt had bested him twice now.

Cloud was the one who had twice sent the man into the Lifestream. The man knew that if one could hold onto some core of their spirit, then one could remain a separate entity, independent from the planet’s system. Cloud. The man decided to make Cloud that core...

When the Lifestream erupted onto the surface of the planet, the man had already surrendered his inconsequential memories to the planet. Memories from when he was a boy, of his few friends, of the battles when he was still unaware, of his life in bygone days– all these became a part of the inundation, encased around Meteor, and finally receded.

So I say, Sephiroth WAS as Splintered described in VII. He wanted revenge for Cloud killing him, but only so long as it served his purpose. He became obsessed with Cloud in the interim because it was all he managed to hold onto in the Lifestream. He lost most of his other memories and emotions. This wasn't an issue the first time because he was thrown bodily into the Lifestream, rather than joining it as a soul like everyone else.

I know it irks people that Sephiroth's attentions are so fixed on Cloud now, but as I've said before, I like that it cost him something to stay together in the Lifestream. I like that he was damaged by being killed at the end of FF7, and isn't just coming back because he's a special snowflake.

 

[Kai Schulen]

Thanks to a certain fic (Dear Kunsel by Sinnatious) I want to believe that Kunsel was still at ShinRa, but he was secretly helping out Cloud and AVALANCHE and keeping tabs on them through text messages because of his friendship with Zack.

After the Lifestream event, Cloud and Kunsel made plans to meet and have a drink but during Meteor fall Kunsel dies is kidnapped by Deepground and they meet after the events of DoC because I refuse to believe that Kunsel dies at the end of the fic, *sob*

 

[Mantichorus]

If he hated Cloud, more than anyone in the FF series ever hated (Kuja? Kefka? Cyan? Brahne? Tifa even?) no amount of pride would have held him back from skewering Cloud instead of monologizing smugly.

In the words of Terry Pratchett, "if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word."

 

[jazzflower92]

In the words of Terry Pratchett, "if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word."

Of course villainous monologuing its probably one of the best known villain tropes in the book.Heck,in the evil overlord list it says not to monologue and just get over with killing the good guy.Then again its a great ego booster to have you enemy underneath you while he is powerless to stop you.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

Then again its a great ego booster to have you enemy underneath you while he is powerless to stop you.

And a thousand new slash fics were born that day.

 

[jazzflower92]

I think people focus so much on Sephiroth that they tend to overlook Jenova.I know Sephiroth is now the one in control and is probably an evolved form of her but I keep thinking Jenova is connected to Spira because FFVII is the future of FFX.I think Jenova when she used to be the goddess of Spira's lifestream that she used to be kind and motherly towards her planet.She was then corrupted and then twisted into the parastic form she is now.Thats just my theory and it might be jossed but until then its my headcannon.

My other theory about Jenova was she was a woman was turned into a creature like Sin.I could see a disgruntled Yu Yuevon corrupting Jenova into what she is today to get back at the Spirans leaving Spira.This would probably give Jenova a good fruedian excuse for the way she is.

I was thinking the human Spirans and Al Behed who left Spira later became the ancestors of the humans on FFVII planet.I also think that the Cetra were the original inhabhitants of the planet and that the Spirans landed on Gaia and made it their new homes.They were welcomed by the Cetra with a mix of good to bad repsonses.

 

[Ite]

I think people focus so much on Sephiroth that they tend to overlook Jenova.

 

[jazzflower92]

What I am saying is that I think Jenova herself is an interesting character that I believe has been wasted in potential in being developed further.I have seen many fan fiction interpretations about her.Before she was defeated by the Cetra I know that she was probably a very clever and devious villain.She probably preyed on people's emotions by transforming into their deceased relatives so they would be too conflicted to attack her.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

The thing about Jenova is that she's more of a plot device than a character in her own right. This is why we don't ever see her in character sections of FFVII guidebooks; instead, she's filed into the same category as terms like "Weapon" and "SOLDIER."